Wednesday, August 12, 2009

School Library Journal (USA)

Lovely review from SLJ just in today for the American edition of The Book of Dreams: "lyrical writing and exquisitely detailed descriptions of the Faerie world and geographical locations in Canada." Sweet balm to the wounded after a brutal review from Kirkus: "a skeleton of a story." (Some skeleton at almost 700 pages.) One of these days I'll learn to ignore reviews. As James Joyce himself observed, whether good or bad, they are all subjective opinion. There are no authorities on fiction, only readers who like or dislike what you have written. Truth to tell, but, I will always be delighted when I get the thumbs up from the younger generation. One book blog - in BetweeN the pages - gave BOD five stars. Here's their rating system: 1 star - use as doorstop, 2 star - bearable while on pain medication, 3 star - read once, do not repeat, 4 star - definitely keep it on your shelf, 5 star - use as altar. It doesn't get better than that!

3 comments:

I'm a librarian, so I read all the library-related review magazines. I actually went "say whaaat?" when I read the Kirkus Review of BOD this week. Have to disagree with them. I re-read The Book of Dreams every year around Thanksgiving in October because it takes me to my magical happy place. If I listened to Kirkus, I would miss out on so many good books! They're so harsh. They actually advocated that the author of a book they didn't like "be taken out and shot." Nice, eh?

I'm pretty harsh on books myself, but I read hundreds of them. I've been reading yours since I was a teenager and they are definitely, definitely up there amongst my favourites.

Thanks, KJH. I'm thrilled by your comments on BOD. I think the Kirkus Reviews are so harsh because they are anonymous, which is rather incredible in itself and obviously encourages all kinds of abuse. The reviewer takes no responsibility for his or her words; an act of cowardice really. When I wrote as a critic for the Irish Times, John Banville discouraged reviewers from savaging anyone's work. He said if you could say nothing good about a book, then don't review it. A much classier attitude, than the quick stab in the dark style, eh?

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About Me

I was born in Ireland and grew up in Toronto, Canada with my seven sisters and two brothers. Left home at seventeen to live in a commune, then headed off across Canada with my pal, Carole, and we hitch-hiked around California for months, then back up to Vancouver(Van as we called it then) and across Canada with two more pals, Linda and Peggy. A year later, headed off to Malaysia and Borneo with Jeunesse Canada Monde/Canada World Youth for a year. Baik-lah! Back home, went to Trinity College at the University of Toronto (posh blokes) while also joining the Canadian Naval Reserve as an Officer Cadet. Trained on the east and west coasts of Canada every summer. Great fun. Then what? Hmm. Started to write books, dodgy personal life (that's personal but let's just say it's been a long time between drinks) started to wander around the world, had a darling daughter, settled down in Ireland, wrote more books.